Officials Must Decide Whether To Let The Animal Stay At Its Owner's Home Within City Limits.

Kissimmee's code-enforcement board voted 4-3 Thursday night that Miss Piggy's owner, Pamala Sutton, was not in violation of a city ordinance forbidding farm animals inside city limits. The 75-pound miniature Vietnamese potbellied pig will be able to stay in her home until the City Commission decides its next step in the fight between Sutton and City Hall.

Commissioners can either vote to change the wording of the ordinance to include banning potbellied pigs, keep the wording the same and let Sutton keep her pet, or let the issue go to court, said city manager Mark Durbin.

The code-enforcement board's decision is the latest chapter in Miss Piggy's story, which started in January when Sutton was cited for keeping a farm animal in a residential area. Sutton appealed to the City Commission twice to allow her to keep her pig, with no luck.

The biggest argument about the ordinance stems from the language of the law. City attorney Don Smallwood rewrote the original ordinance to specifically name potbellied pigs after Sutton argued the ordinance was vaguely written and doesn't list what animals are outlawed, but commissioners voted not to change the wording in June. The matter was then turned back to code enforcers.

Commissioner Steve Burke, who was Miss Piggy's loudest detractor at the meeting in June, said he would have voted to reword the original ordinance if he had known Smallwood wouldn't be able to defend the law when it was challenged.

"When it was brought up, there's nothing that says specifically you can't have certain animals," he said.

"If he can't convince seven citizens it was indeed in the rules, he'll never convince a judge," he said.

Jack Eney, a longtime code-board member who voted to not find Sutton in violation of city code, said he thinks the rules must be rewritten to state specifically what kinds of animals the city wants to allow.

"We dismissed the case with the idea they had to write a new ordinance," Eney said.

Eney said he thinks Sutton's pet falls into a different category of animal than the rules were originally written for -- livestock.

"The laws of Kissimmee reflect the old agricultural nature of this area and this is no longer an agricultural area, so when you think of a pig or swine or hog you think of pork chops . . . a pet does not normally become hamburger and that whole point was missed," he said.

Board member Sidney Spafford said he voted to find Sutton in violation of the law because he thought the ordinance was not ambiguous.

"As I told Pamala, I admire her determination and I understand her love of her pet . . . but we're there to enforce the codes that exist now. We're not there to change the codes."

Miss Piggy's future is still up in the air, but Sutton said she thinks the Code Enforcement Board's ruling is a small victory in her fight to keep her pet.

"I guess at this point, it's up to the city," Sutton said. "The easiest thing in the world would be to leave it alone."